Family First: Facing Race in the Child Welfare System (Room 9204) The child welfare system disproportionately scrutinizes and separates families of color, producing long-term consequences for children and families. Panelists will discuss racial justice and racial equity in child welfare policies and practice, and recent successes organizing for change through community-based organizations.
Moderator - Oronde Miller, Institute for Family and Child Well-Being
Alberto Ratana, Community Coalition
Maryellen Santiago, Consultant
Patricia Allard, Soros Justice Fellow
Sharwline Nicholson, Domestic Violence Class Action lawsuit consultant
Jarel Melendez, NYC Administration for Childrens’ Services Circle of Youth
Notes:
Workshop Recap:
Family First: Facing Race in the Child Welfare System
Moderator: Oronde Miller, Institute for Family and Child Well-Being, Washington, DC
Presenters: Alberto Ratana, Community Coalition; Maryellen Santiago, Consultant; Patricia Allard, Soros Justice Fellow
Oronde Miller - The Child Welfare system was designed in service to white families in the 20’s and 30’s in response to caring for orphans of war. Historically it is pathology driven in response to care of children of color who are more likely to be removed from their families when compared with their white counterparts. Also, neglect, rather than abuse, is predominantly the reason for removal from home at a higher rate than found with their white counterparts. Making the distinction between disproportion and disparity of services received is critical. Children of color experience disparity along key Decision Points: Reporting – hospital administrators, school officials, etc. Investigation – Child Protection Services, etc. Substantiation – affirmation or discrediting of reported claim. Placement – adoption, foster care, in or outside of the home, etc. Guardianship - group homes, etc. Re-entry. Children of color tend to be reported more, not placed in familial care as much as white children, removed to stranger care more often, their exit is slower, and re-entry less.
Presenters shared their personal and/or professional experience with the Child Welfare System and discussed what they do in service to the system in their work. Varied personal experiences with the child welfare system emerged including several growing up in foster care and experiencing the disparities therein. In her current work Patricia Allard maintains a focus on the prison industrial complex and likens the child welfare system to neo – slavery with its prioritized focus on the financial benefits of removing children from their families.
Exposing the critical link between the criminal justice system and child welfare system, she provides services to women convicted of non-violent drug offenses who upon returning home find their children gone forever. When Mothers and Fathers of color are convicted, their children often enter the foster care systems. Non-violent drug offenders experience delays in re-entry hindering their efforts to reunite their families. Maryellen Santiago is a child of foster care and is impassioned to address the disparities of experience for children of color in the system. She works with the Casey Alliance of Racial Equity to address the concerns to assure that the system benefits all children, to improve the data and increase knowledge. She clarified that disproportion is the percentage of children in welfare over the percentage of these children in the general population.
Disparity is the disproportionate rate of negative experiences for children of color over the rate that whites experience. Strategies for combating theses dynamics include engaging birth parents and alumni to be part of the alliance through trainings, education, as well as giving them the tools to increase their voices to improve the system. Alberto Retana organizes with an understanding that root causes of the child welfare system are based in socio-economic conditions and conditions of power and power over. His South LA community of predominantly African Americans and Latinos is rife with racial disparities. He stressed that relative care is largely unsupported as group homes get the lion share of resources. Concerns exist on the local, state and national level in the child welfare system. Getting advocates elected into state offices is a key part of the strategy to redesign legislative agendas to improve the child welfare system. Relative care is complicated of late by coerced familial adoption. These adoptions bring resources to the states and localities although support and resources for these families are scant. In some instances resources exist, but the families are unaware and not informed by the child welfare system.
Where is the resistance to the work? The notion that non-violent drug offences are directly linked to this notion that the children are better off without the parents overlooks that treatment is a solution and that the war on drugs in a failure. The Second Chance Act addresses the re-entry of formerly convicted drug offenders to make certain that they have resources for unification with their children. Health and Human Services and Department of Corrections need to collaborate and examine foster care and incarcerated parents’ dynamics in order to make reasonable efforts to keep families together. Language differences among birth parents, alumni and legislators disallow movement forward pointing out the need to redefine terms and produce dialogue that includes children and parents. Professionalization of the field is also a barrier as the voices of the affected are trivialized. Ultimately, any movement beyond the welfare state is resisted on the local, state, and federal levels.
Resources:
“Knowing Who You Are” – Video and E-learning Casey Alliance
Robert Hill, Synthesis of Research on Child Welfare
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